[singing in Spanish]
- In San Antonio during the holidays,
the Mexican-American community celebrates the Posadas.
I remember, we would get to play as children,
Mary, or Joseph, or the angels.
And we learned to sing those songs as part of growing up.
You celebrated the Posadas for nine days,
and then the final day, you would actually go to the church.
[lively trumpet music]
- Man: [speaking Spanish]
- 500 years ago, before the Europeans came,
we as Indigenous people celebrated the Sun God.
What an important god that is, you know,
who gives us life.
There were nine days of festivities,
and this just happened to be during the middle of December.
But when the Spanish conquerors come in,
they want to rid the Indigenous communities
of those celebrations.
And so the Sun God gets replaced by Jesus
and our celebration of Navidad.
* Sleep in heavenly peace [lively trumpet music]
- [speaking Spanish]
- Okay. - Okay.
- Veronica Castillo is the master craftsperson
from Puebla.
She and her family have built many trees of life
that are focused on Navidad.
[gentle music]
- Veronica: [speaking Spanish]
[speaking Spanish]
- [speaking Spanish] - [speaking Spanish]
- The origins of the tree of life begins in Mexico.
When a family identified that they were gonna marry
two different children to each other,
the families would give a branch
to their respective future families.
- [speaking Spanish]
- They held onto that branch for 10 years.
And on the tenth year,
they would take those branches and burn them.
- [speaking Spanish]
- And then instead of the branch,
what they shared with each other was a tree of life in clay.
- [speaking Spanish]
- Graciela: When the Spanish conquerors come in,
bringing in their Catholic religion,
the tree of life changes.
The regular husband, wife becomes Adam and Eve.
Now it's about good and evil.
And so instead of vines going up,
it suddenly is like a snake.
The evil coming in.
Today, people are starting to remember
what their traditions were in the past.
- [speaking Spanish]
- Graciela: And the Castillo family are now coming back
to what their great, great, great grandparents did
before the conquest.
- [speaking Spanish]
- So we have this space called ofrenda
to honor the people that die.
And so this ofrenda is to honor my father and his life.
- Veronica: [speaking Spanish]
- Graciela: Veronica Castillo has been teaching the skill
of making these works in clay
to the Mexican American women of San Antonio for 17 years.
She has kept up the tradition of her family,
but she's also gone beyond
what anybody in her family has done.
And we have been honored to have her.
[all speaking Spanish]
[gentle music]